PensionDanmark Annual Report: Good results in all business areas in 2017

Satisfactory performances in all business areas made 2017 a very good year for PensionDanmark. Increased membership, growing pension contributions, solid returns and low costs.

The continued recovery of the Danish economy left its favourable mark on PensionDanmark’s 2017 performance. An increasing number of staff in the companies whose employees have pension schemes with PensionDanmark boosted our membership to 713,000 and lifted pension contributions to a historical high DKK 13.6 billion. Total assets have now surpassed DKK 233 billion.

Total investment returns were DKK 16.6 billion – the highest ever – resulting in returns of 6.9% for 65-year-old members to 9.9% for 40-year-old members. The satisfactory 2017 return continued the streak of strong returns recorded over the past years. In the five years from 2013 to 2017, the total accumulated return for the typical member was 42%.

“PensionDanmark’s mission is to give our members a financially secure retirement. This requires solid and stable returns on their pension savings, and our ambition is therefore to provide world-class investment management. Due to the low level of interest rates, we have stepped up our investments in corporate bonds, private equity, infrastructure and real estate. Thanks to this strategy, our members receive solid returns that rely less on developments in the global economy or the equity markets,” said PensionDanmark CEO Torben Möger Pedersen, and he added:

“For several years, PensionDanmark has been a leading investor in climate-friendly energy infrastructure such as wind farms and biomass power plants. When building new real estate, we insist they be certified as sustainable and thus make sure they are designed to be future-proof. As a responsible investor, we plan our investments so they not only provide our members with solid returns but also contribute as much as possible to developing innovative solutions to the key challenges facing Denmark and the international community,” said Torben Möger Pedersen, referring to PensionDanmark’s Corporate Social Responsibility Report 2017.

Thanks to efficient insurance administration, digitalisation of all processes and the increased use of robotics, administrative costs remained at a low level.

”In 2017, we kept our administration expenses at the already low level of DKK 298 a year per member, which will be unchanged also in 2018. We are able to do this thanks to extensive digitalisation and the deployment of even more robots. This has freed up time for our staff to interact more with our members and resulted in very short call centre response times. As a result, customer satisfaction remain one of the highest in the industry”, said Torben Möger Pedersen.